Thursday, 25 June 2015

Manda Scott on When is Fact not a Fact

Today's guest blog is from author Manda Scott. As M C Scott she is the author of three crime novels - Hen's Teeth (which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize), Night Mares and Stronger Than Death. As Manda Scott she is the author of a series of historical novels. Her standalone novel No Good Deed was nominated for a 2003 Edgar Award. In 2010 she founded the Historical Writers Association and became its Chair. Into the Fire is her latest novel.

When is a fact not a fact?
When does truth stop being truth and become so utterly corrupted as to
represent its opposite? When does our
emotional attachment to an idea supersede our search for integrity, authenticity
and veracity?

We live in a world of greys.
Pretty much every psychological test ever done demonstrates how bad we are at
observing things. (If you haven't seen the 'Selective Attention' test, checkout the video here:

and that even when we've observed them, taken part in them, lived through them,
we're exceptionally bad at recalling
anything other than a vague approximation of what actually happened.

Rudyard Kipling spent years
trying to find out what happened to his son in the Battle of Loos in 1915. He
failed, and of his failure said that perfectly decent men, with absolute
honesty, gave absolutely opposing accounts of what had happened on the day in
September when his son died.

Even when we're not in a
life-threatening battle with carnage all around, we layer on our own
projections and then pretend they have some kind of objective basis in
fact.And then something comes along to
disrupt it all, and the results can be… spectacular.

Twelve years ago, I read an
article in The Independent, which described
an orthopaedic surgeon who specialised in building faces on skulls, and who
thought he had identified the true origins of the Maid of Orléans – known on
this side of the Channel as Joan of Arc.

She's one of the most
spectacular vehicles-for-projection ever to have walked on the earth and just
about the only thing you could say with absolute certainty is that the myths of
the illiterate, mystic-visionary peasant girl are wholly untrue.She wasn't whom you think.She wasn't whom any of us thought – at least,
not those of us brought up on the Ladybird book of Joan of Arc. She was an
outstanding warrior, a trained knight, a consummate horsewoman, and an adept
politician.She wasn't particularly
godly and as far as I can tell, her visions were largely a figment of her need
to protect her origins.

And yet few people in the
past 600 years have dared to question the myth.In her lifetime, and immediately after, there was good reason: this was
a time when questioning the church was a death sentence and if the church said
she was a peasant, then you didn't argue. But even then, it's not that easy
because how the church actually described her was as 'the woman, Jeanne d'Ay,
who consorted with the fiende (sic) that called itself The Maid' so they didn't have to confront anything approaching
reality.

If ever there's an instance
of selective attention, of an entire culture's inability to see past their own
prejudices, this is it – and not only in 1429 – the effects on modern day
France are every bit as interesting as those in the midst of the Hundred Years'
war.

We may not burn people at
the stake any more, but the surgeon who said he had found her identity was
thrown out of France and it's not too big a leap from that to arson and murder
in defence of an ideal.

I sat on the idea for a
decade – as Gunnar Staalesen said recently on this blog, ideas can marinade for
a long time before they come to fruition, but in the end, the promise of
discovery, the idea that it might be possible to turn over six centuries of
spin, and to do so in a way that would craft the ultimate dual time-line
thriller was inescapable.

And all of that, translated
into the present day can be incendiary in all senses of the word. What better
starting point for a thriller? INTO THE FIRE is a dual time line
thriller, far harder to write than any single time-thread narrative, but with
the possibility of crafting a whole that is greater than the sum of its
parts.We have the drive of 'Who was
she?' in both time frames, but a thriller needs more than that, it needs pace
and push and the sense of uncertainty that keeps us reading just to be sure our
favourite characters are going to live safely to the end.And in both the present and the past, the
reaction to the radical truth of the Maid's existence is potentially lethal – a
perfect narrative drive.

I loved writing this book.
As someone said recently, it's the book I was born to write – it brings
together everything from my veterinary past, and my (dismally failed) efforts
to be a competitive dressage rider, to the battle re-enactments, to the recent
Chairing of the Historical Writers' Association. Everything I've done, everyone I've spoken to
has come together to make this possible. All it needs now are readers ready to come
along for the ride. Best if you're not afraid of fire, though…

More information about Manda Scott and her books can be found on her website. You an also follow her on Twitter @hare_wood or find her on Facebook.

Into The Fire -

There
is a secret, hidden within a body, burning within the flames, that will change
it all. A man’s charred corpse is found in the latest
of a string of arson attacks in the French city of Orléans. His is the first
death. An extremist group claim responsibility but their whereabouts cannot be
found. Police inspector Capitaine Ines Picault and her team must track them
down before more people die. Their only clue? The name of a woman who has been
dead for over 500 years: Joan of Arc. She
is one of the great enigmas of history – a young woman who came from nowhere to
lead the armies of France to victory against England. And who died the same
fiery death as the man whose body has just been discovered. As more fires rage in Orleans and the death
toll mounts, Picault must look to the past and the secrets which lie buried
there to unravel the mysteries of the present. As the clock counts down, she
must challenge some fundamental truths to save those closest to her…

Interested in winning a signed copy of Into The Fire then if so retweet the post using #INTOTHEFIRE and @hare_wood.

2 comments:

That whole thing about fact vs fiction! There are actually people out there who stop watching historical tv shows because the shows are not accurate. The only reason I stopped watching "Reign" is because it reminded me of my junior prom. It's Wolf Hall's fault, but we're going to see more historicals. Facts about what really happened can be argued but it is hardly worth it. For a really good time, see "Farewell, My Queen" with Diane Kruger as Marie Antoinette.